External articles > All

The following compilation of articles from external sources is presented in the hope
that they will be useful but Clarion is not responsible for their content.

US to loosen nuclear weapons constraints and develop more 'usable' warheads

Julian Borger, Guardian, 9 January 2018

First paragraph

The Trump administration plans to loosen constraints on the use of
nuclear weapons and develop a new low-yield nuclear warhead for US
Trident missiles, according to a former official who has seen the most
recent draft of a policy review.

Latest NATO Arms From US Found in Daesh Depot in Al Mayadin - Syrian General

Sputnik, 24 October 2017

First paragraph:

The largest Daesh storehouse captured by the Syrian armed forces in the city of Al Mayadin, in the east of Syria, contained the latest examples of NATO weapons from the United States, Belgium and the United Kingdom, Brigadier General of the Syrian Arab Army Hasan Suheil told reporters.

As ISIS Flees, Syrian Troops Find Arms Cache From US, NATO

teleSUR, 24 October 2017

First two paragraphs:

The Syrian Armed Forces have discovered a large cache of military arsenal from Western countries, particularly from the United States, left behind by the Islamic State group as its forces fled the city of al-Mayadin in the east of the country, according to Sputnik.

“We have encountered a huge arsenal of advanced U.S., British and Belgian weaponry,” said Hasan Suhel, the Syrian general who led the military operation to liberate al-Mayadin.

US Special Forces Collaborating with ISIS – Russia

Nytten, Eurasian Times, 24 September 2017

First paragraph:

The Ministry of Defense of Russia has published an aerial survey of the areas of deployment of terrorist group Daish (also called ISIS or Islamic State) in Syria, where we can see a large number of American armoured cars such as Hummer, which is in service with US special forces.

Distrustful U.S. allies force spy agency to back down in encryption fight

Joseph Menn, Reuters, 21 September 2017

First paragraph

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An international group of cryptography experts has forced the U.S. National Security Agency to back down over two data encryption techniques it wanted set as global industry standards, reflecting deep mistrust among close U.S. allies.

paragraph 6:

The presence of the NSA officials and former NSA contractor
Edward Snowden’s revelations about the agency’s penetration of
global electronic systems have made a number of delegates suspicious of the U.S. delegation’s motives,
according to interviews with a dozen current and former delegates.

GETTING JULIAN ASSANGE: THE UNTOLD STORY

John Pilger, 20 May 2017

First paragraph:

Julian Assange has been vindicated because the Swedish case against him was corrupt. The prosecutor, Marianne Ny, obstructed justice and should be prosecuted. Her obsession with Assange not only embarrassed her colleagues and the judiciary but exposed the Swedish state's collusion with the United States in its crimes of war and "rendition".

How Video Finally Proved That Cops Lie

Albert Samaha, Buzzfeed, 17 January 2017

BuzzFeed News reviewed 62 incidents of video footage contradicting an officer's statement in a police report or testimony. From traffic stops to fatal force, these cases reveal how cops are incentivized to lie — and why they get away with it.

Giving practical support to conscientious objectors – as well as to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden – has led to an unexpected recent phase in the life of an activist who cheerfully volunteers that he still looks like “the hippie from central casting”.

...

“Most resistance in both the Gulf war and the recent invasion [of Iraq in 2003] came out of the US and also the British military.”

Hora Chilena: Chilean refugees in Cambridge in a Britain at ease with itself

David Lehmann, Latin American Bureau, 22 January 2014

On Wednesday December 11, the entire Chilean community of Cambridge plus about a hundred of their friends gathered at the city’s Arts Picturehouse to watch the premiere of Hora Chilena, a documentary made by Camila Iturra, Lautaro Vargas and Kip Loades. The film is about two once unconnected groups, brought together by one of the great tragedies of the late twentieth century which still remains an emblematic and searing moment in the political memory of my generation.

Council homes facing the bulldozer for second time

Council homes set for bulldozer

Cambridge News, 16 January 2013

Second paragraph:

There were hopes
further work would
lead to the residents
being allowed to stay,
but a report to the
council's community
services committee,
which meets tomorrow,
recommends the schemes are approved again.

Confessions of a drug cartel hitman on the run

Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy, Independent, 10 July 2011

Third paragraph:

“
For six days, in room 164 of an anonymous motel, he told us of his life as a professional assassin for the Juárez drugs organisation, a cartel that controlled one of the main drug trafficking routes from Mexico across the border into the lucrative American market.
”

Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq

Paul Bignell, The Independent, Monday 18 April 2011 23:00 BST,

First paragraph:

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

The sicario A Juárez hit man speaks

Charles Bowden, Harpers, May 2009

Journalist Charles Bowden interviews a former contract killer for the Mexican drug cartels
who says he was trained in the USA
and that he kidnapped, tortured and murdered while he was a commander in the Mexican police.
This man subsequently was the subject of the film
El Sicario, Room 164 by Gianfranco Rosi.

“In his many transports of
human beings to bondage, torture,
and death, he is never interfered
with by the authorities. He is part of
the government, the state policeman
with eight men under his command.
But his key employer is the organization, which he assumes is the Juárez
cartel, but he never asks since questions can be fatal. They give him a
salary, a house, a car. And standing.
He estimates that 85 percent of
the police worked for the organization.”

British training for Uzbek military

Private Eye, 10 June 2005, number 1134, page 6

First paragraph:

WHILE foreign secretary Jack Straw
rushed to condemn Uzbekistan's army for
shooting dead civilians in Andijan, no one
bothered to suspend the British army's
training programme for the very same Uzbek
soldiers.

Our military won't find itself guilty

Phil Shiner
Friday 6 May 2005
The Guardian

Comment by Phil Shiner, a Birmingham lawyer. Amongst other things
he outlines his attempt in February 2005 to bring
"compelling and highly relevant" evidence before a British court martial
taking place in Osnabruck, Germany. The court martial concerned events
at British "Camp Breadbasket" in Iraq.

'FREE MY JAILED ARMY HUSBAND'

Charlotte Hart, Sutton Coldfield Observer, 15 April 2005, page 1

A Birmingham newspaper reports that Abdullah William Webster, a former US Army sergeant,
who is the husband of local woman Sue Webster, was sentenced by court martial in June 2004
to 14 months in prison after refusing to fight in Iraq. The article includes interview
with his wife, photographs of them and their child, comments from
Amnesty International which has adopted him as a prisoner of conscience, and
details of how to write in support.

OPEC ON THE MARCH: Why Iraq Still Sells Its Oil à la Cartel

Greg Palast, Harper's, April 2005

The following paragraph is quoted from the website of Palast, not from Harper's magazine:

Within weeks of the first inaugural, prominent Iraqi expatriates
- many with ties to U.S. industry - were invited to secret discussions
directed by Pamela Quanrud, an NSC economics expert now employed at State.
"It quickly became an oil group," one participant, Falah Aljibury, told me.
Aljibury, an adviser to Amerada Hess's oil trading arm and to investment banking
giant Goldman Sachs, who once served as a back channel between the United States and Iraq during

Troops could face trial after human rights ruling

Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday December 15, 2004
The Guardian

The Guardian reports a "landmark" High Court judgement delivered yesterday by
Lord Justice Rix and Mr Justice Forbes. They said that British troops were "in effective
control" of the prison in Iraq where Baha Mousa died, which meant that the Human Rights Act applied.
They found, however, that it
did not apply to the deaths of five others whose families were
parties to the action. Both sides were granted leave to appeal. The court criticised
the army's investigation. This article also has some quotes in reaction to this judgement.

We can hold our military to account

Phil Shiner
Wednesday December 15, 2004
The Guardian

Phil Shiner writes on the victory for his clients that the High Court judgement
delivered yesterday represents and explains what it means. He recaps the case
of Baha Mousa who, according to a witness, was systematically beaten and tortured
to death in captivity by British soldiers over a period of three days. He also notes:
"Over the 19 months since the first death in the 40
cases of killings and torture in which I act, not one soldier has been charged."

This judgment is only concerned with two preliminary issues: (1) whether the deaths took place within the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom so as to fall within the scope of (a) the Convention and (b) the Act; and (2) whether, if so, there has been a breach of the requirements under articles 2 and 3 of the Convention regarding an adequate enquiry into those deaths.

After the judgment this document was available at
http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/judgmentsfiles/j2980/al_skeini-v-ssfd.htm

Now (2017) the whole website has disappeared and this High Court judgement does not seem to be avaiable on any
.gov.uk website (according to the search engines).

The world's first multinational

Nick Robins
Monday 13th December 2004
New Statesman

This essay suggests that there are lessons relevant today
in the history of the British East India Company. Robins quotes
Jawaharlal Nehru in The Discovery of India, 1944 on the
"The corruption, venality, nepotism, violence and greed of money of these early
generations of British rule in India," and says that in
Wealth of Nations, 1776, Adam
Smith used the company as a case-study of the undermining of liberty and justice.
Robins describes the looting of Bengal's gold and silver in 1757 after
Robert Clive won the Battle of Palashi, opium trafficking,
Edmund Burke's attempt to impeach Warren Hastings in 1788,
and many more things besides. Finally Robins mentions one case
where the company did not escape with legal
impunity. In 1774 a group of merchants led by Gregore Cojamaul and
Johannes Padre Rafael won a civil case against Harry Verelst, former
governor-general of Bengal. He
was found guilty of "oppression, false imprisonment and singular depredations"
for what he had done in Bengal
and had to pay 9,000 pounds damages and full costs.

Soldiers arrested after Iraqi beaten and drowned

Vikram Dodd
Thursday August 26, 2004
The Guardian

Dodd reports that at least two soldiers have been arrested by the
Royal Military police investigating the death of
Ahmed Jabbar Kareem, 17, who allegedly died after being beaten by British soldiers and
ordered to swim across the Zubair river in Basra, Southern Iraq, where he drowned.
This report then quotes the words of
Jabbar Kareem Ali, the victim's father,
from a mysterious "statement seen by the Guardian". According to these quotations,
army investigators have interviewed him,
exhumed his son's corpse, taken a key witness - Ayad Salim Hannon - to British Army Headquarters
for ten hours,
and an officer has told him that they have arrested four men.
(Dodd does not then say how The Guardian then arrived at the figure of "at least two".)
There is a quotation from Phil Shiner, the father's solicitor, and quotations from MoD,
which refused to provide any useful information at all. The article also mentions
that four soldiers from Royal Regiment of Fusiliers are to be court-martialled and that
Scotland Yard is investigating a death.

UK troops 'beat Iraqi to death'

BBC, 28 July 2004

Description of a case in the High Court, with a picture of witness
Kifah Al-Mutari, a survivor
of imprisonment at a British military base called Darul Dhyafa.
The court has to decide whether the Human Rights Act 1998 applied to troops in
South Eastern occupied Iraq and whether there should be an independent inquiry to investigate
deaths of Iraqis at the hands of British troops. There are six test cases, but this report
describes only that of Baha Mousa.
It mentions the Queen's Lancashire Regiment and the Kings Regiment.
The report quotes Rabinder Singh QC, appearing for the
victims, reading from a witness statement of Kifah Al-Mutari
and in parts is ambiguous as to whether it is quoting Kifah Al-Mutari in court,
or quoting his witness statement.
The report also has extracts from
the witness statement
of the dead man's father, Daoud Mousa, on the state of his son's body after he had been killed.

Iraqis' battle for justice begins in high court today

Owen Bowcott, Guardian, 28 July 2004

Third paragraph:

The judicial review by the high court of six test cases of Iraqis allegedly killed by servicemen in the British-controlled sector of southern Iraq after the war ended has been sought in an attempt to overturn the government's refusal to order an independent inquiry into the death of Iraqi civilians.

Army may lose right to stop charges

Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor, Telegraph, 12 June 2004

This report covers a mixture of topics. It mentions that Phil Shiner was on BBC Radio 4
yesterday and quotes some of the things he said. It says that last month "MPs"
were misinformed about the number of cases being investigated
by the "service police" in Iraq. The figure given by Adam Ingram and confirmed
by the Prime Minister was 33 while the correct figure was 61 and it has since risen
to 75. The Telegraph does not give any reason for the misinformation. It also
mentions a case where after investigation of possible unlawful killing in Iraq,
the soldier's commanding officer dismissed the case. However the Army Prosecuting
Authority referred the case to the Attorney General and last month Lord Goldsmith
announced that after further investigations by Scotland Yard, the Crown Prosecution
Service will decide whether to prosecute.

End this lawlessness

Phil Shiner
Thursday June 10, 2004
The Guardian

Phil Shiner, a solicitor acting in the cases of 20 Iraqis killed or injured by British troops,
outlines the case of Baha Mousa, mentions a few other cases
and explains the significance of the forthcoming High Court case scheduled for 28-30 July 2004.

Bereaved Iraqi families seeking 'justice'

Andrew Clennell, Telegraph, 6 May 2004

Includes some quotations of statements made by solicitor Phil Shiner
after lodging an application for judicial review at the High Court yesterday.
This report also gives very brief details of a few of the people involved in
the action. It also mentions some investigations in Basra by Shiner's colleague,
Mazin Younis.

Payout claim for civilians shot in Basra

Richard Norton-Taylor,
The Guardian, Saturday 28 February 2004

Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers is bringing a case to the High Court
and it is expected to be heard next month.
The exact details of the case are completely opaque in this article, but it
is something to do with compensation for Mazin Jumah Gatteh whose brother
Hasim was gunned down in the street by British troops as was another man
Abed Abdul-Kareem Hassan, in the Majidiya district of Basra in August 2003.
This article includes extracts of a witness statement from Gatteh and of an
apologetic letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Ciaran Griffin,
commander of the 1st Battalion, the King's Regiment, written to the Beni Skein tribe.
It also reports some details of money that Griffin said he had "donated" to
the families of the victims.

Troops accused on Iraq killings

Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday February 21, 2004
The Guardian

The Guardian reports that the MoD is facing the "threat" of (unspecified) legal action
over the deaths of at least 18 Iraqis allegedly killed by British soldiers.
It reports some names of victims with a few details: Waleed Fayayi Muzban, Raid Hadi Al Musawi,
Hanan Shmailawi, Muhammad Abdul Ridha Salim, Jaafer Hashim Majeed. There is a quote
from Phil Shiner, acting in these and other cases (he says the 18 are the "tip of the
iceberg") and a quote from Adam Price, MP, who has asked parliamentary questions.

Inquiry launched into death of PoW

Andrew Clennell, Independent, 11 February 2004, page 2

A strange article, recycling a report from the
Sun about a prisoner who died in British custody. The (few) details
sound remarkably similar to the case of Baha Mousa, except that the name
given is Al-Maliki. The Independent provides no explanation for presenting second-hand
information from the tabloid press without any reference to its own reports published
more than a month earlier. Clennell does report that a MoD spokeswoman confirms that
a "prisoner of war" has died in British custody.
This article is not to be found on the Independent's
web site.

Soldiers may be charged over Iraqi death in custody

Andrew Johnson, Independent on Sunday, 8 February 2004, page 2

This article reports that military police have been investigating
6 deaths of civilian prisoners held by
the British in Basra. One case
has been referred to the Army Prosecuting Authority.
Following parliamentary questions from Harry Cohen and Adam Price
the MoD has named "the other" (and it is not clear in the article what
that means) dead: Ahmed Jabber Kareem,
Said Shabrahm and Hassan Abbad Said.
No further action is to be taken in
the case of Radhi Natna. Other victims
mentioned are Abd al-Jabbar Mousa
and Baha Mousa. The article concludes by saying that at Christmas
the British
opened their own prison in Basra and previously
their prisoners had been taken to the American Camp Bucca
at Um Qasr.
(This synopsis was made from the printed newspaper.)

MoD investigates nine more deaths of Iraqi civilians

Andrew Johnson, Independent on Sunday, 11 January 2004, pages 1, 2

This article reports that the in addition to the case of Baha
Mousa the Special Investigations Branch of the Royal Military Police
is investigating 9 other cases of deaths of civilians. Adam Ingram,
the armed forces minister, said that 17 cases of deaths caused by
British troops had been referred to the Royal Military Police. This
was in response to questions asked last week by Adam Price, MP.
The article mentions two victims: Radi Nu'ma and Abd al-Jabbar Mossa.
It contains some indirect quotations of Price.
(This synopsis was made from the printed newspaper.)

British soldiers 'kicked Iraqi prisoner to death'

Robert Fisk, Independent on Sunday, 4 January 2004, page 1

First paragraph: "Exclusive by Robert Fisk in Basra
Eight young Iraqis arrested in Basra were kicked and assaulted
by British soldiers, one of them so badly that he died in British custody,
according to military and medical records seen by The Independent on Sunday."

Fisk reports that British military authorities offered the relatives of the man
who was killed
$8,000 in compensation and that the Special Investigation Branch of the army opened
an investigation.
The Independent on Sunday has copies of both a death certificate
for Baha Mousa - which says that he died of "asphyxia" - and a document from a British
hospital that says fellow prisoner Kifah Taha suffered injuries from a severe beating.
The article includes a picture of the top part of the letter offering compensation.
Some more documents appear on the full report on page 16.
(Note this synopsis was made from the printed newspaper.)

'The British said my son would be free soon. Three days later I had his body'

Robert Fisk, Independent on Sunday, 4 January 2004, page 16

Subheading: "Robert Fisk reports from Basra on the
'death in custody' of the son of an Iraqi police colonel and
evidence that he was savagely and deliberately beaten to death by British soldiers"
Expanding on the report on page 1, this long report includes facsimiles of 4 documents:
a letter of condolence from Brigadier William Moore, commander of the British
Forces, a death certificate, a "wound assessment and evaluation form"
of Frimley Park Hospital NHS Trust, a letter on British Army letter heading
from Major James Ralph to another doctor. There are also photographs of Baha Mousa
and his family, including his two small children, now orphaned. Fisk reports
that an inquiry (case number 64695/03) was opened on 18 September
2003 by 61 section of the 3rd Regiment, Royal Military Police's Special Investigation Branch
for which
Staff Sergeant Jay was named as chief investigating officer by Captain G Nugent.
(Note this synopsis was made from the printed newspaper.)

MI6 chief heads for Cambridge

Guardian, 12 November 2003

Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6 who was embroiled in the controversy over the government's Iraqi weapons dossier, has been appointed head of a Cambridge University college, it was announced last night.

Investigative reporter Greg Palast reveals how Republican gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger is part of a larger scheme to help Enron and other power companies avoid paying back $9 billion in illicit profits by replacing Gov. Gray Davis. [Includes transcript]

Arnold's Enron Secret

By Greg Palast, AlterNet
October 4, 2003

Now, 34 pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter's fax machine that tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men.
It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter
as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and
other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the
$9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.

Schwarzenegger: Total Amnesia?

Santa Monica, CA --Internal Enron e-mails confirm that Arnold Schwarzenegger was among a small group of executives who met with Lay at the posh Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel in May of 2001, in the midst of California's energy crisis. View the e-mails. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, which obtained the e-mails, is calling on Schwarzenegger to acknowledge the meetings and disclose the information that was presented and discussed. The meeting with Enron occurred ten days after rolling blackouts darkened California for two consecutive days; Schwarzenegger has previously said that he does not remember such a meeting.

By 2017 this has disappeared from
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/utilities/pr/pr003708.php3

Refusenik Israeli pilots under fire

BBC, Thursday, 25 September, 2003

"The pilots' rebellion is an earthquake with a potential for disaster, whose magnitude is difficult to assess at present," he told Yediot Aharonot. "If this storm does not go way quickly, it could drag with it other parts of the army and not only the air force."

Mysterious deaths

Street of Shame

Private Eye, 8-21 August 2003, page 4

Second paragraph:

But here's the difference: no heads rolled. And, it now transpires,
the readers don't even get an apology. On 24 July the following brief
announcement was buried in the Standard: "A number of readers have
expressed concern that our front page picture on 9 April, showing Iraqis
celebrating the liberation of Baghdad, had been enhanced to depict
a larger crowd than actually existed. As it was taken from TV footage,
extra people were added to the image to fill the space left by the removal
of logos from the picture. In our opinion this did not alter the clarity
or truth of the picture's message but we are happy to make this clear."

Torture testimony 'acceptable'

Audrey Gillan, Guardian, 22 July 2003, page 2

Carefully hidden by the Guardian
under an irrelevant headline
on page 2
is an official USA admission of murder of prisoners held by the CIA in Bagram:

A US military coroner, Elizabeth Rowse,
ruled that two men from Afghanistan held at a secret CIA interrogation centre at Bagram
air base had been killed under interrogation.
She confirmed that the official cause of death of the two men was "homicide".

The Galloway saga has eerie echoes of the Scargill affair of 1990

Roy Greenslade, Guardian May 8, 2003

A former editor of Daily Mirror now
admits that he printed
false allegations against Arthur Scargill in 1990.
While claiming that he himself was misled, he
mentions a secret service plot and MI5 and
points out similarities to the present campaign against George Galloway.
(For more information about the deceitful
campaign against Arthur Scargill, including more on the role of Roy Greenslade, see also
"The Enemy Within MI5, Maxwell and the Scargill Affair", Seumas Milne, Verso
1994)

Tracing the missile

Glen Rangwala
CASI discussion list, 31 March 2003

It seems that the US and UK government are still claiming that the 28 March
bombing of Shu'ala marketplace, which is being reported as having killed 62
peope, could have been the result of malfunctioning Iraqi air defence
equipment.

Tens of thousands rally in Boston
for peace

Tens of thousands of people from across New
England and beyond converged on a damp,
windswept Boston Common for a massive antiwar
rally yesterday, then marched through the city,
saying they hoped to show the world that not all
Americans support President Bush and the war in
Iraq.

This was at http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/089/metro/Tens_of_thousands_rally_in_Boston_for_peace+.shtml but by 2017 has gone.

Minister is greeted by protesters

Adam Ingram, Minister of State for the Armed Forces, faced a hostile reception inside and outside
party headquarters in Norfolk Street.

Full article:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/search/dispstory.asp?id=529307
(this link no longer works in 2017)

ITALY: Civil disobedience targets US military

Stephen Bennets, Green Left Weekly, March 5, 2003

Third paragraph:

The "Stop that train; disobey global war" campaign has attempted to block 27 special trains
en route to Livorno laden with US troops, tanks, rocket launchers, jeeps and bulldozers.
Members of the railworkers' union are providing activists with detailed information on rail
movements and, in a rerun of events in 1969 during the Vietnam War, dock workers are
refusing to load military cargo in Livorno.

Hundreds skip lessons for anti-war demo

About 400 pupils from Hills Road and Long Road Sixth Form Colleges in Cambridge marched into
the city centre to protest against a possible war with Iraq.

This article was at http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/search/dispstory.asp?id=527421

Appellate Court Rules Media Can Legally Lie

By Mike Gaddy, 28 February 2003, Sierra Times

On February 14, a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying,
concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the
$425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox
Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information.
The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie
or distort the news on a television broadcast.

IF WAR BREAKS OUT

Stop the War Coalition, 15 February 2003

On the day war breaks out, the Stop the War Coalition is calling on everyone to make
your protest felt immediately - occupy your city or town centre, organise mass meetings
or walkouts at work, sit in at your college or university.

Academic humiliates copy-cat government

Reggie Vettasseri, Varsity, 14 February 2003, page 2

This week national governments were blushing and the
headlines of the world's media were screaming after a Cambridge
fellow revealed that the British Government's latest dossier
on Iraq was little more than a poor copy of out of date and
uncredited academic articles.

(This article was also published on the following link, which no longer works in 2017
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/search/dispstory.asp?id=l5077 )

Seventy arrests at anti-war blockade

Tom Ebbutt at Northwood
Varsity, 24 January 2003

Cambridge students were
among the 70 protestors arrested on Sunday at a peaceful
protest outside Britain's
Military Headquarters. They
were members of the four hundred anti-war protestors who
rallied outside RAF Northwood,

Cambridge Student to be human shield in Iraq

Tom Ebbutt, Varsity, 24 January 2003

Tomorrow morning
Shane
Mulligan will set
out on a journey to
Iraq. When he arrives
there in just under
two weeks time
he will go to a
place that he sees
as being worth protecting
- maybe a power
station, a water
works or a hospital
- and stay there.

Troops in Gulf to use depleted uranium shells

Ian Bruce, The Herald, 22 January 2003

The Ministry of Defence announced last year it was to buy a tungsten-tipped,
armour-piercing round amid concern over the side-effects of the DU shells,
although it continues to deny that the ammunition is the source of cancers
contracted by servicemen in areas where it was used in battle since its
introduction in 1991.

Discounted Casualties

The human cost of depleted uranium

Akira Tashiro, senior staff writer, The Chugoku Shimbun, Hiroshima

As I traveled through the US, UK, and Iraq to cover this story, I was confronted at every turn by the sad and frightening spectre of "discounted casualties,"- people exposed to depleted uranium and other toxic substances, and now tormented by leukemia and a whole array of chronic disorders.

The dishonest case for war on Iraq

by Alan Simpson, MP - Chair of Labour Against the War
and Dr Glen Rangwala - Lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, UK.

There is no case for a war on Iraq. It has not threatened to attack the US or Europe. It is not connected to al-Qa'ida. There is no evidence that it has new weapons of mass destruction, or that it possesses the means of delivering them.

An extract from "The Great Deception" on USA, CFR in creation of EU

Christopher Booker, Richard North, "The Great Deception", 2003

This extract is mainly about promotion of the idea of European integration by the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) "generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and
other industrial corporations".

Children of the Gulf War Photo Exhibition U.S. Tour

As citizens concerned with the social justice and the situation in Iraq, we have conceived a program that we hope will draw attention to the devastation of war and economic sanction in Iraq, and moral bankruptcy of U.S. foreign policy regarding people in Iraq, especially children.

A Grad Student Mimicked Saddam Over the Airwaves

Broadcast Ruse

by Ian Urbina, Village Voice,
November 13 - 19, 2002

Word got around the department that I was a good Arabic translator who did a
great Saddam imitation," recalls the Harvard grad student. "Eventually,
someone phoned me asking if I wanted to help change the course of Iraq
policy." So twice a week, for $3000 a month, the Iraqi student tells the Voice on
condition of anonymity, he took a taxi from his campus apartment to a
Boston-area recording studio rented by the Rendon Group, a D.C.-based public
relations firm with close ties to the U.S. government. His job: Translate and dub
spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for
broadcast throughout Iraq.

Into the Dark
The Pentagon Plan to Provoke
Terrorist Attacks

by CHRIS FLOYD, CounterPunch
November 1, 2002

This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story
which was itself submerged by mounds of gray
newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's
Los Angeles Times. There--in an article by military
analyst William Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of
the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon
bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon--came
the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a
super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring
together CIA and military covert action, information
warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception."

(Between 2002 and now in 2017 this article moved from www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html
without any redirect being left at the old location.)

Meet the new Zionists

Matthew Engel
Monday October 28, 2002
The Guardian

You might think these Christian activists represent the furthest
shores of American politico-religious wackiness. The politicians
don't think so. This conference began with a videotaped
benediction straight from the Oval office. Some of the most
influential republicans in Congress addressed the gathering
including - not once, but twice - Tom DeLay, who is hot favourite
to take over as majority leader of the House of Representatives
after the midterm elections on November 5, thus becoming
arguably the most powerful man on Capitol Hill.

Area residents are preparing for the Washington antiwar protest. Organizers promise a large and
diverse affair.

Kristen A. Graham, Philadelphia Enquirer
Posted on Thu, Oct. 24, 2002

"I thought Sept. 11 was a chance for us to do the right thing," said McIlvaine, 57, who lives in Oreland,
Montgomery County. "What Bush wants to do is morally wrong, wrong under all international law. I'll say that for
as long as I have to."

Parents of dying Iraqi children vent fury
at Bush

Samia Nakhoul Reuters, 23 Oct 2002 14:16

International medical surveys have reported a dramatic jump in
cancer cases, genetic deformities and abnormalities in children
born after 1991, especially in the south where depleted uranium
munitions were fired by U.S. and British troops as they drove Iraqi
forces out of Kuwait.

Robert Fisk: What
the US President
wants us to forget

Robert Fisk, Independent, 9 October 2002

Secondly, because the envoy was
sent to Iraq to arrange the
re-opening of the US embassy - in
order to secure better trade and
economic relations with the Butcher
of Baghdad. Thirdly, because the
envoy was - wait for it - Donald
Rumsfeld. Now you might think it
strange that Mr Rumsfeld, in the
course of one of his folksy press
conferences, hasn't chatted to us
about this interesting tit-bit. You
might think he would have wished to
enlighten us about the evil nature of
the criminal with whom he so
warmly shook hands. But no.

Prosecute Sharon for
war crimes, Israeli
women say

Robert Fisk, Independent, 24 September 2002

The women's letter, which was sent
via the United States, has amazed
the Lebanese lawyer representing the
survivors of the massacre, for which
Mr Sharon was held "personally
responsible'' by an Israeli inquiry. "It
is a wonderful gesture,'' Chibli
Mallat said yesterday. "It is a
wonderful message to receive in
these very dangerous and violent
times.''

IDF kills 9-year-old in El
Bireh

Arnon Reguler, Ha'aretz, 20 September 2002

Nine-year-old Abdel Salam
Sumerin was killed yesterday
when Israel Defense Forces
troops used live fire to
disperse a crowd of school
children challenging the
army's attempt to impose a
curfew on the El Amari
refugee camp, in El Bireh.

In August 2017 this article seems to have disappeared into the Orwellian memory hole. It was
was at the following url.

Cause of gulf illness is still unknown

The 1148th didn't fight on the front lines, but it hauled fuel into war
zones. On the way, members of the unit often passed burned-out Iraqi
vehicles and tanks destroyed by U.S. artillery.

...

In any future conflict in the Persian Gulf, vaccines given to troops in the field would be electronically archived, and the Defense Department would compile data on units' locations and any symptoms reported by soldiers before, during and after deployment, according to Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of the Deployment Health Support Directorate.

President Bush
wants war, not
justice - and he'll
soon find another
excuse for it

Robert Fisk, Independent,
18 September 2002

Major Scott Ritter, Iraq's
nemesis-turned-saviour, was
indeed - as an inspector - regularly
travelling to Tel Aviv to consult
Israeli intelligence. Then Saddam
accused the UN inspectors of
working for the CIA. And he was
right. The United States, it emerged,
was using the UN's Baghdad offices
to bug Iraq's government
communications. And once the
inspectors were withdrawn in 1998
and the US and Britain launched
"Operation Desert Fox", it turned
out that virtually every one of the
bombing targets had been visited by
UN inspectors over the previous six
months. Far from being an
inspectorate, the UN lads - though
they didn't all know it - had been
acting as forward air controllers,
drawing up an American hit list
rather than monitoring compliance
with UN resolutions.

Ten Reasons Why Many Gulf War Veterans Oppose Re-Invading Iraq

by an anonymous Gulf war veteran,
Friday, September 13, 2002, CommonDreams.org

10. The Department of Veterans Affairs will not be able to care for additional casualties because VA can't even take care of current VA patients. Most veterans now wait six months to see
a VA doctor, and most veterans wait more than six months to receive a decision on a VA disability claim. Many of those waiting in line are Gulf War veterans, many with unusual illnesses.
According to VA, of the nearly 700,000 veterans who served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, more than 300,000 have sought VA healthcare, and more than 200,000 have filed VA
disability claims. Two weeks ago, President Bush slashed $275 million from the healthcare budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Schröder says Germany will not join Gulf military assault even with a mandate

Tony Paterson, The Independent, 7 September 2002

One opinion poll released yesterday
by German television showed only 4
per cent of voters backed German
troops being used in a war with Iraq
under any circumstances while 41
per cent said they were in favour if it
was backed by a UN mandate.
Fifty-three per cent were opposed to
any involvement by German armed
forces. Another poll yesterday by the
Forsa group found 85 per cent of
Germans supported their
government's position on Iraq.

Blair willing to pay
'blood price'

Robin Cook, the Leader of the
House, suggested that MPs should
be allowed to vote on whether
Britain would take military action.
But Mr Blair is determined to avoid a
formal vote after being warned by
government whips that 100 Labour
MPs could mount the biggest
backbench rebellion since the party
came to power in 1997. Such
opposition would force him to rely
on the support of Tory MPs.

In war, some facts less factual

Citing top-secret
satellite images, Pentagon
officials estimated in
mid-September that up to
250,000 Iraqi troops and
1,500 tanks stood on the
border, threatening the
key US oil supplier.

But when the St.
Petersburg Times
in Florida
acquired two
commercial Soviet
satellite images
of the same area,
taken at the same
time, no Iraqi
troops were
visible near the
Saudi border -
just empty
desert.

The heavy metal logic bomb

David Hambling,
The Guardian
Thursday September 5, 2002

Attacks on buried targets are likely to be a feature of the next Gulf War. Key Iraqi
assets are concealed under layers of concrete. The US aims to take out these targets
with bunker-busting bombs, and the concern is that massive amounts of depleted
uranium (DU) will be used in the process.

Iraq war would be a mistake, says city MP

CAMBRIDGE MP Anne Campbell has warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that war against Iraq would be a "mistake".

As the likelihood of military action against Saddam Hussein increased dramatically, she said worried constituents were contacting her on a daily basis.

The full article used to be at
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/search/dispstory.asp?id=197793

Playing skittles with Saddam

The gameplan among Washington's hawks has long been to
reshape the Middle East along US-Israeli lines, writes Brian
Whitaker

Brian Whitaker,
Guardian,
September 3, 2002

With several of the "Clean Break" paper's authors now holding key positions in
Washington, the plan for Israel to "transcend" its foes by reshaping the Middle
East looks a good deal more achievable today than it did in 1996. Americans may
even be persuaded to give up their lives to achieve it.

The Men From JINSA and CSP

THEY WANT NOT JUST A US INVASION OF IRAQ BUT 'TOTAL WAR' AGAINST ARAB REGIMES.
Jason Vest,
The Nation, 2 September 2002, page 16

On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident
than in its relentless campaign for war--not just with
Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the
most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last
year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means
necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the
Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone
who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department,
the CIA or career military officers--is committing
heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there
is no difference between US and Israeli national
security interests, and that the only way to assure
continued safety and prosperity for both countries is
through hegemony in the Middle East--a hegemony
achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints,
force, clientism and covert action.

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?

Bob Feldman
[clarion: no further information available, not even a date]

The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic
relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is
rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep
Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the
WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation
Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's
ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of
PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One
reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other
Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment
Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors.

The Death Convoy of
Afghanistan

The close involvement of
American soldiers with General
Dostum can only make an
investigation all the more sensitive.
"The issue nobody wants to discuss
is the involvement of U.S. forces,"
says Jennifer Leaning, professor at
the Harvard School of Public Health
and one of the pair of Physicians for
Human Rights investigators who
pushed their way into Sheberghan.
"U.S. forces were in the area at the
time. What did the U.S. know, and
when and -where-and what did
they do about it?"

This article was at http://www.msnbc.com/news/795153.asp?cp1=1

In August 2017 there is no obvious sign of it at original url or in archive.org

US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy

Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, August 19, 2002

In real life too, Mr Perle is not fighting his battle single-handed. Around him
there is a cosy and cleverly-constructed network of Middle East "experts" who
share his neo-conservative outlook and who pop up as talking heads on US
television, in newspapers, books, testimonies to congressional committees, and
at lunchtime gatherings in Washington.

The network centres on research institutes - thinktanks that attempt to influence
government policy and are funded by tax-deductible gifts from unidentified
donors.

Veterans warn of Gulf War syndrome risk

The chairman of the steering committee of the Australian
Gulf War Veterans Association, David Watts, told The
Sunday Age he did not want to see other young service
personnel suffer.

"I think it's very irresponsible of the government to start
talking about sending people over for another go when they
haven't really looked after the people who went in the first
place," Mr Watts said.

Robert Fisk: Be very
afraid - Bush
Productions is
preparing to go into
action

They are setting up the
Arab world. We are
being prepared for an
epic supported by
Hollywood and a plot of
lies

Robert Fisk, Independent, 17 August 2002

It's not difficult to see what's going
on. It's not just al-Qa'ida who are
the "enemy". It's Iraq, Syria,
Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia.
Bush Productions are setting up the
Arab world. We are being prepared
for a wide-screen epic, a spectacle
supported by Hollywood fiction and
a plot of lies.

While media spotlights one
anthrax suspect, another is too
hot to touch

Delinda Curtiss Hanley, Arab News, 16 August 2002

Did the US media merely lose interest after
the government failed to find an Iraqi or
Al-Qaeda connection, and therefore could
not link the postal terrorism to Sept. 11?
Or was the press warned off the sensitive
subject? After months of silence, in August
the subject of the anthrax attacks once
again hit the newspapers and network TV
stations. The scientist in the spotlight,
however, may be little more than a hapless
"fall guy".

Robert Fisk:
Afghanistan is on the
brink of another
disaster

Robert Fisk,
Independent,
14 August 2002

Things have since changed. The
American forces in Afghanistan, it
seems, now leave the beatings to
their Afghan allies, especially
members of the so-called Afghan
Special Forces, a
Washington-supported group of
thugs who are based in the former
Khad secret police torture centre in
Kabul. "It's the Afghan Special
Forces who beat the Pashtun
prisoners for information now - not
the Americans," the Western
military man told me. "But the CIA
are there during the beatings, so the
Americans are culpable, they let it
happen."

Selective Memri

Brian Whitaker investigates whether the 'independent' media
institute that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it
seems

Guardian, August 12, 2002

The reason for Memri's air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the
people behind it. The co-founder and president of Memri, and the registered
owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.

Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence
and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers,
Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.

Return to
Afghanistan:
Explosives that US
knew would kill
innocents continue to
take their toll

Robert Fisk,
Independent,
10 August 2002

Her son's killer was a small, round,
yellow cylinder buried beneath the
ground - a small fragment of an
American cluster bomb - which was
infinitely more sophisticated and
more efficiently made than anything
in this ramshackle home. Tamim
worked for the Halo Trust, the
mine-clearing operation to which
Diana, Princess of Wales, gave so
much publicity, and he was an
experienced man, 25 years old, with
four years of de-mining to his name.

Return to
Afghanistan: Ladies
and gentlemen, let's
have a big hand for
Gul Agha - the UN's
warlord of the year

Robert Fisk,
Independent,
9 August 2002

A few dozen metres further, I came
to a courtyard in which the prisoners
had piled their bedding: rotten,
stained mattresses and plastic
sheeting and soiled clothes. These,
no doubt, were the real furnishings
of the tiny brick cells. So who owned
the red and golden carpets?

Return to
Afghanistan:
Families of the
disappeared demand
answers

Robert Fisk,
Independent,
8 August 2002

Where, Mrs Abdul Qadir asked
Ahsan Akhtar, the director of human
rights, was her husband? The
Independent has now learnt exactly
where he is - he is a prisoner in a
cage on the huge American air base
at Bagram in Afghanistan. He was
kidnapped - there appears to be no
other word for it - by the Americans
and simply flown over the
international frontier from Pakistan.
His "crime" is unknown. He has no
lawyers to defend him. In the
vacuum of the US "war on terror",
Mr Abdul Qadir has become a
non-person.

Allies move towards
air assault as disquiet
over Iraq grows

Kim Sengupta, Independent,
7 August 2002

The disquiet over Tony Blair's
backing for George Bush on Iraq
was in evidence again yesterday
when church figures, including the
Archbishop of
Canterbury-designate, Dr Rowan
Williams, presented a 3,000-name
petition to Downing Street
questioning the moral and legal
validity of a war.

The return to
Afghanistan: For the
forgotten Afghans,
the UN offers a fresh
hell

Robert Fisk,
Independent,
07 August 2002

In Afghanistan, it is possible to go
from hell to hell. The first circle of
hell is the Waiting Area, the
faeces-encrusted dustbowl in which
60,000 Afghans rot along their
frontier with Pakistan at Chaman - a
bone-dry, sand-blasted place of
patched bedouin tents, skinny
camels, infested blankets and skin
disease.

The return to
Afghanistan:
Collateral damage

Robert Fisk, Independent 6 August 2002

Hakim, one of the animal herders,
saw the men from the helicopters
chase the old man into the mosque
and heard a burst of gunfire. "When
our people found him, he had been
killed with a bullet, in the head," he
says, pointing downwards. There is a
single bullet hole in the concrete
floor of the mosque and a dried
bloodstain beside it. "We found bits
of his brain on the wall."

War on Iraq: a blunder and a crime

Michael Quinlan
August 6 2002, Financial Times

Saddam Hussein is a malign tyrant
with a history of aggression against
his neighbours. He almost
certainly has chemical and
biological weapons and would like
to get nuclear ones, in breach of
United Nations Security Council edict. We can
place no trust in his denials or his current
manoeuvring. The world would be better
without him. But starting a war is an immensely
grave step and we must still ask whether it
would be wise, and right, to take it.

Sir Michael Quinlan
was permanent under-secretary at the Ministry of Defence, 1988-92,
and is a visiting professor at the Centre for Defence Studies at King's
College, London

This article was once at http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1028185560401&p=1012571727126

A Coup in The Hague

Hannah M. Wallace
28 June 2002
Mother Jones July/August 2002

"I was being expected to take
orders from the US delegation,
and to customize the
implementation of the
convention to the US demands,"
says Bustani from his home in
The Hague. "I was expected to
consult Washington on every
single issue, which I refused to
do."

Ruppert/Chossudovsky Draw Crowd of 1,200

June 27, 2002 FTW

After the lecture, as he was hurrying to the
airport, Ruppert was questioned by the local
press who photographed his passport as
evidence of the Canadian government's desire
to censor coverage and public access to the
conference.

(This article was at the following url, where it remained, I think until June 2017
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/g6b_calgary.html )

AFGHANISTAN: Concerns over effects of
depleted uranium

Australian Broadcasting Corporation 27 June 2002

The United States campaign on terrorism in Afghanistan
may have created a terror of its own. Thousands of
people, as well as future generations, may have been
exposed to high levels of radiation from depleted
uranium, believed to be the so called 'mystery heavy
metal' used in US guided missiles, bunker busters and
other weaponry in Afghanistan.

In August 2017 the old url http://abc.net.au/ra/asiapac/programs/s593117.htm redirects to
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/asia-pacific

Fighting for his day in court

Moshe Gorali
Ha'aretz English Edition
Wednesday, June 26, 2002

In an unusual move, First Lieutenant (Res.)
David Zonsheine was released from custody
on Monday - at least temporarily.
Zonsheine, a 29-year-old software
engineer and reserve officer in an elite
paratroopers unit, refused to serve in the
territories during Operation Defensive
Shield.

This article was once at the follwing url but is no more (Aug 2017) and does not seem to be on archive.org
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=180174&contrassID
=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=180174

Who is putting Scotland on the global
radioactive scrapheap?

Jeremy Watson
Scotland on Sunday
23 June 2002

TONNES of dangerous radioactive scrap
metal is being imported into Scotland every
year by dealers who have been duped by
international fraudsters.

Anti-U.S. militants showing up all over

Eric Margolis -- Contributing Foreign Editor
Toronto Sun
23 June 2002

Afghanistan, billed only last fall
as a triumph for America and
President Bush, is now looking
less and less like a victory and
more each day like the beginning
of a long, bloody struggle that
could and should have been
avoided.

The full article was at
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jun23.html

UK selling arms to India

Richard Norton-Taylor
Guardian Tuesday 20 June 2002

The government approved arms sales to India and Pakistan throughout the
Kashmir crisis, at a time when ministers were warning about the dispute
spreading beyond the region and telling British citizens to leave the area
immediately.

US artists damn 'war without limit'

Duncan Campbell
Guardian Friday 14 June 2002

A group of leading American writers, actors and academics have signed a
statement strongly criticising their government's policies since September 11. It
is an indication of a growing feeling that the administration is promoting its own
agenda on the back of the attacks.

DU: A BURNING ISSUE

Private Eye No. 1056 14 June - 27 June 2002, page 26

LAST month's crash of
a China Air Boeing 747
is a timely reminder
of the presence of depleted
uranium (DU) on board
big jets. TriStars,
DCIOs and all jumbos
made before 1993 carry
built-in bars of DU as
counterweights in the
tail of the aircraft.

Official TWA 800 Findings Challenged

By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
June 10, 2002 Accuracy in Media

The TWA Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization, FIRO, has taken the unusual step of filing a
petition with the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, asking for reconsideration of the findings on the
probable cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800. Such petitions are entertained only if new evidence has been
found or a showing that the NTSB findings were erroneous. FIRO claims that some evidence that the NTSB kept
secret and which has now become available for public scrutiny is new evidence that shows that the official
findings were erroneous.

"I made them a stadium in the middle of the
camp"

Tsadok Yeheskeli, Yediot Aharonot, May 31, 2002

"For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. The whole area.
Any house that they fired from came down. And to knock it
down, I tore down some more. They were warned by loudspeaker
to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance.
I didn't wait. I didn't give one blow, and wait for them to come
out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down
as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as
many as possible. Others may have restrained themselves, or so
they say. Who are they kidding? Anyone who was there, and saw
our soldiers in the houses, would understand they were in a death
trap. I thought about saving them. I didn't give a damn about the
Palestinians, but I didn't just ruin with no reason. It was all under
orders.

Washington is pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of war

by Michel Chossudovsky
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , 23 May 2002

India and Pakistan are currently at the brink of war.

Presented by the media as a conflict regarding the status of Kashmir, the role of US foreign policy in feeding this conflict is invariably overlooked. Since the end of the Cold War, Washington has deliberately contributed --through
covert intelligence operations-- to fuelling the Indo-Pakistan conflict. In the wake of September 11, amidst new terrorist attacks and ethnic riots in India, conditions have developed which favour the outbreak of war between the
two countries.

Riddle of the spores

Why has the FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks stalled? The evidence points one way

George Monbiot
Guardian
Tuesday May 21, 2002

Yet, while it trawled the empty waters, the bureau failed to cast its hook into the
only ponds in which the perpetrator could have been lurking. In February, the
Wall Street Journal revealed that the FBI had yet to subpoena the personnel
records of the labs which had been working with the Ames strain. Four months
after the investigation began, in other words, it had not bothered to find out
who had been working in the places from which the anthrax must have come. It
was not until March, after Barbara Hatch Rosenberg had released her findings,
that the bureau started asking laboratories for samples of their anthrax and the
records relating to them.

Forgotten victims

Jonathan Steele in Herat
Guardian Monday 20 May 2002

His uncle watched him die. Soon after the United
States started bombing Afghanistan last autumn the small boy, just under two
years old, fled his home on the back of a donkey with his parents and other
family members.

Statement of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney on Terrorist Warnings

May 16, 2002

Several weeks ago, I called for a congressional investigation into what warnings the Bush Administration received before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I was derided by the White House, right wing talk radio, and spokespersons for the military-industrial complex as a conspiracy theorist. Even my patriotism was questioned because I dared to suggest that Congress should conduct a full and complete investigation into the most disastrous intelligence failure in American history. Georgia Senator Zell Miller even went so far as to characterize my call for hearings as "dangerous, loony and irresponsible."

Today's revelations that the administration, and President Bush, were given months of notice that a terrorist attack was a distinct possibility points out the critical need for a full and complete congressional investigation.

AT MIT, THEY CAN PUT WORDS IN OUR MOUTHS

Gareth Cook, The Boston Globe, 15 May 2002

CAMBRIDGE - Scientists at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology have
created the first realistic videos of people
saying things they never said - a scientific
leap that raises unsettling questions about
falsifying the moving image.

In one demonstration, the researchers taped a
woman speaking into a camera, and then
reprocessed the footage into a new video that
showed her speaking entirely new sentences,
and even mouthing words to a song in
Japanese, a language she does not speak. The
Click for complete article (1089 words)

The above abstract was taken from the Boston Globe archive website in 2003,
starting at http://www.boston.com and searching "video MIT mouths".

In 2017 a different, longer abstract is available starting the search from
https://secure.pqarchiver.com/boston/advancedsearch.html

The Boston Globe will charge for the full article.

The full article says several
additional interesting things which are summarised here. The head of the team at MIT is
Tony F. Ezzat who is a graduate student. Also in the team is Tomaso Poggio, described as a "neuro scientist"
at the McGovern Institute for Brain
Research and the head of the lab where the work is being done.
According to "the researchers" (presumably Ezzat and Poggio), volunteers
in a laboratory test were unable to distinguish real and fake video clips.
Currently the technique only works well on a video
of someone facing the camera and not moving much, but according to Poggio it will not
be difficult to make it work on a moving head at any angle. It is also not convincing for
more than a few sentences because the speaker seems to lack emotion.
Ezzat says he
would like to work on adding emotion. In July 2002 they will present a paper on it at Siggraph,
a computer graphics conference.
According to Ezzat they are already testing it on videos of Ted Koppel,
a television presenter on a US television station called "ABC",
with the aim of making him appear to be talking Spanish.

The fake persuaders

George Monbiot
Guardian Tuesday 14 May 2002

While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens' groups to campaign in
favour of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now they create fake citizens.
Messages purporting to come from disinterested punters are planted on
listservers at critical moments, disseminating misleading information in the hope
of recruiting real people to the cause. Detective work by the campaigner
Jonathan Matthews and the freelance journalist Andy Rowell shows how a PR
firm contracted to the biotech company Monsanto appears to have played a
crucial but invisible role in shaping scientific discourse.

BAe Systems mentioned in Private Eye

Private Eye 3-16 May 2002, page 3

International development secretary Clare Short's suggestion that
BAE Systems' £28m sale of a military air traffic system to
Tanzania might be corrupt has put her even more at odds with
her cabinet colleagues.

Just one measure of the esteem in which Tony Blair's government holds
Labour party donor BAE Systems is the latest new year's honours list.
The company's government affairs director Peter McLoughlin and regional
marketing director Brian Tucker were both presented with OBE's - a
timely reward for their firm's success in striking the Tanzanian deal.

WWIII is coming, 'I'm sure,' high-level Sharon aide says

[Ra'anan Gissin], 53, is in Tucson this weekend as part of a 12-day tour of the United States to
promote the purchase of Israel Bonds. The bonds are part of a program that began in 1951 in which
securities are sold to individuals and corporations to finance economic growth in Israel.

Mohyeddin Abdulaziz, 54, a Tucson resident and Palestinian who grew up ...

The imprisonment of these five is most significant ! They are not the
first young (18-20) conscripts to refuse duties in the campaign of
repression. Others have done so in the past. But their 3-year
service places them under much stricter discipline than reservists called
in for a few weeks, and few have the maturity and self-confidence to face
up to the ordeal they can expect from their superiors until their
discharge. The spread of the refusal movement to the conscript units
marks a notable breakthrough.

UN Chemical Arms Chief
Ousted in U.S.-Led Vote

Reuters, Wednesday 24 April 2002

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The head of a global chemical weapons
control body was ousted on Monday by a United
States-sponsored vote provoked by a rift over his diplomatic
overtures to secure Iraq's compliance on arms inspection.

This article was once at
http://dailynews.netscape.com/mynsnews/story.tmpl?table=n&cat=50600&id=200204221746000279882&dpt=international

US ousts director of chemical arms body

Richard Norton-Taylor and agencies,
Guardian, Tuesday 23 April 2002

The head of the world's chemical weapons regulatory body, Jose
Bustani, was dismissed yesterday by a United States-led vote.

America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian
Muslims

The Srebrenica report reveals the Pentagon's role in a dirty war

Richard J Aldrich
The Guardian, Monday April 22, 2002

His findings are set out in "Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992-1995". It includes
remarkable material on covert operations, signals interception, human agents and
double-crossing by dozens of agencies in one of dirtiest wars of the new world
disorder. Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and
radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims -
some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in "the war against
terrorism". Pentagon operations in Bosnia have delivered their own "blowback".

Robert Fisk: Fear and learning in America

Independent 17 April 2002

And for the first time in more than a decade of lecturing in the
United States, I was shocked. Not by the passivity of Americans
- the all-accepting, patriotic notion that the President knows best
- nor by the dangerous self-absorption of the United States since
11 September and the constant, all-consuming fear of criticising
Israel. What shocked me was the extraordinary new American
refusal to go along with the official line, the growing, angry
awareness among Americans that they were being lied to and
deceived.

US, other countries seek end to violence along Israel's border with
Lebanon

The News Internet Edition, ISSN 1563-9479 Thursday 11 April 2002

(Updated at 1120 PST)
WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush's administration is taking part
in a diplomatic effort to prevent Israel's border with Lebanon from
becoming a second front in the Middle East conflict, said sources on
Thursday.

State Department officials highlighted the US concern as Hezbollah
guerrillas in Lebanon staged one of the biggest attacks in two years,
firing rockets and mortars into Israeli territory.

Such attacks have been frequent since Israel began attacks against
Palestinian militias.

Angry streets

Hundreds of thousands of Arabs have protested daily on the streets since Israeli troops attacked Palestinian towns and laid siege to President Yasser
Arafat's Ramallah compound on 29 March.

Daily demonstrations have erupted in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Large turnouts were reported in Libya and Iraq. But the
largest were in Morocco and Sudan where marching crowds swelled to a million each. Marches, a rare occurrence in the conservative Gulf states,
were also reported in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. Arab officials joined in more than one demonstration in solidarity
with the Palestinians.

World Bank to West Bank

George Monbiot
Guardian
Tuesday 9 April 2002

Since the army's offensive in the West Bank
began, hundreds of Israeli peace campaigners and foreign
activists have been seeking to put themselves in its way.At great personal risk, members of the International Solidarity
Movement have sought to protect civilians by making hostages
of themselves. It is a display of extraordinary courage and
self-sacrifice.

Pipeline Brigade

President Bush is arming troops to protect Occidental
Petroleum in Colombia. What next?

By John Barry
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL, 8 April 2002

April 8 issue _ Is George W. Bush using war as an
extension of his oil policy? It looked that way in
February, when Washington announced a $700
million aid package for the Andean region,
largely to fight the twin threats of guerrilla war
and drugrunning that threaten the area. As is
usual, half the money will go to Colombia, but
with a new twist: $98 million for training and
equipping a Colombian brigade of around 2,000
soldiers to protect the 772-kilometer Cano
Limon pipeline.

Thinking the Unthinkable

Wayne Madsen,
Counterpunch, April 8, 2002

Now that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
has officially put the anthrax investigation on a back burner,
it is time for Americans to think the unthinkable: that the
FBI has never been keen to identify the perpetrator because
that perpetrator may, in fact, be the U.S. Government itself.
Evidence is mounting that the source of the anthrax was a top
secret U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland and that the perpetrators
involve high-level officials in the U.S. military and intelligence
infrastructure.

Shattered Afghan Families Demand U.S. Compensation

Carlotta Gall,
New York Times,
8 April 2002
First paragraph:

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 7 -- Victims of the bombing in Afghanistan
handed in petitions from 400 families to the American Embassy here
today, part of a growing movement to demand compensation from the
United States for the loss of their families and homes.

The article includes interviews with some of the surviving victims outside the embassy.
and reports that they got nothing but a short
meeting in the street with Michael Metrinko, the head of the
embassy's political and consular sections.
Metrinko is reported as saying that the embassy has been recieving petitions
since January and has asked Washington what answer to give
but has not received a reply either from the 'State Department' or the
'Defense Department'.

Cairo acts

Al-Ahram Weekly Online
4 -10 April 2002
Issue No.580

The level of diplomatic "channels" that Cairo will leave open with Tel Aviv was left unclear, raising questions about the possibility of downgrading
Israel's diplomatic mission in Cairo. The decision does imply, however, that Egypt's economic, agricultural and tourism ties with Israel will be frozen --
a step that meets part of the demands voiced by demonstrators across the country, who want Israel's embassy in Cairo shut down.

Defying unseasonable rain, hundreds of Israeli peace supporters, reinforced by a strong delegation of internationals, clambered a hill
overlooking Military Prison 6 at Athlit, to hold a Freedom Seder in honour of the jailed refuseniks (there were 18 when we started, up to 21
when the ceremony ended !) Above all, we were there to celebrate the fact that there are now OVER A THOUSAND REFUSENIKS !

Fallout, Cancer and Politics

Matt Bivens
26 March 2002 the failsafe point, a new project
funded by the
Nation Institute

You've probably heard less about a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, completed in August 2001, but only published in dribs and drabs over the past few weeks. Mandated by Congress, the study is the first ever to estimate what effect radioactive fallout from nuclear testing has had on the lower forty-eight American states.

The CDC finds such fallout has likely killed 11,000 Americans since the 1950s. They died from all manner of cancers, from melanoma to breast cancer to leukemia. Fallout has also caused about 22,000 nonlethal cases of cancer. For those keeping score, that's 33,000 cases of cancer among Americans, courtesy of global nuclear testing.

[YeshGvul] 2 naval refuseniks + 1

Two reserve officers of the Israeli navy have been jailed for refusing
service in the occupied territories.

Capt. (res.) Shahar Tzur (30), formerly of the missile boat section,
was jailed for 28 days. Tzur is married, a resident of Haifa and a
student of architecture at the Technion. He is a signatory of the
"Courage to Refuse" declaration.

Democracy for sale

Greg Palast, 23 March 2002

This page is an edited transcript of a talk given by
Greg Palast at the
Think Twice Conference in Cambridge, on 23 March 2002.

[Clarion: recommended reading. It includes information additional to that in his book
of the same name. The topics are: The Florida list,
Barrick and Bush,
The Bin Laden connection,
The Necessity Test,
Argentina and The World Bank,
The World Bank's biggest loan,
Step 3½ the IMF riot]

A spectacular miscarriage

Judit Neurink
Al-Ahram Weekly Online
21 - 27 March 2002
Issue No.578

Arab legal experts in Camp Zeist were incensed by the verdict. Whilst Libyan lawyers spoke of a trial that is politically motivated, Saber Ammar of the
Arab Lawyers' Union criticised "the influence of politicians and the press on the judges." Chairman Bechir Essid of the Tunisian Bar Association said he
was disillusioned with the Western judicial system. "How can you sentence someone without any proof? This is abuse of justice.,' he said.'

The United Nations' observer, Hans Kchler, an Austrian professor of Jurisprudence, was alarmed by the decision. He described the appeal as "a rather
spectacular miscarriage of justice." He was lost as to how a unanimous decision was reached "in the light of some of the analysis presented and
questions asked by the judges."

Iraqi MDs blame U.S. for deformities

Doctors link cancer and abnormalities found in children living in the
south to depleted uranium contained in bombs that were used in Persian
Gulf war, TIMOTHY APPLEBY says

By TIMOTHY APPLEBY

Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Print Edition, Page A4

BASRA, IRAQ -- When
a baby is born in southern Iraq these days, the mother's first question
is not whether the child is male or female. "What she wants to know is
whether her baby is normal," says Janan Ghalib, head of the cancer unit
at Basra's Maternity and Children Hospital. The doctor needs only to
flip open a photo album filled with horrors to explain why. There are
pictures of babies without eyes, and some with too many eyes. There are

http://www.globeandmail.com :
"News stories that were published on this Web site more than
a week ago are not retained on the site. To find such stories,
or other newspaper material that does not appear on the
Web site, please check the options listed below"...

Uranium weapons health
warning

By BBC News Online's Ania
Lichtarowicz
Tuesday, 12 March, 2002

Gulf war veteran Brian Tooze was rushed into hospital with
suspected meningitis four years after he returned from the conflict.

But instead of the brain disease, doctors found there was evidence
of DU in his urine.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that now he suffers from
skin cancer, kidney trouble, irritable bowel syndrome, constant
headaches, tinnitus and problems with balance.

The soldiers who refuse to fight

The Scotsman Mon 4 Mar 2002

Earlier this year, a group of some 50 enlisted men and officers signed a
petition proclaiming their refusal to serve in the occupied territories, saying
they were given orders that served no security purpose, and boldly stating
that "we shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to
dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people".

I Was There When The Americans Bombed

Dr. Suhail Shafi,
March 2002

The night before the Americans bombed was, for me and so many others in the coastal Libyan capital city, a night like so many others, at
least to start of with.I was the younger child of an Indian couple, who were both physicians, both employed in Libya for over a decade.

DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS

America's big dirty secret

by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2002

"The immediate concern for medical professionals and employees of aid
organisations remains the threat of extensive depleted uranium (DU)
contamination in Afghanistan." This is one of the conclusions of a 130-page
report, Mystery Metal Nightmare in Afghanistan? (1), by Dai Williams, an
independent researcher and occupational psychologist. It is the result of more
than a year of research into DU and its effects on those exposed to it.

An Antiwar Movement Grows in Israel

Neve Gordon, The Nation, 25 February 2002

A few months after the 1967 war, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a professor at Hebrew
University and a leading Israeli intellectual--who was also an observant Jew--stated
that Israel must immediately withdraw from the occupied territories. He argued that the
occupation was unjust and would inevitably lead to the oppression and subjugation of the
Palestinians, and to the corruption if not destruction of Israeli society. Until his death in the
mid-1990s, he continued to criticize the occupation, using piercing, prophetic language to
condemn the immorality of Israeli policies. For years, Leibowitz also averred that if 500
reservist soldiers would simultaneously refuse to serve in the territories, the occupation
would end.

DU ammunition and the dying doctor

Ullas Sharma
February 20, 2002,
YellowTimes.ORG

Prof. Gunther tried to examine one of these strange bullets and got it to Germany. He found the bullet highly toxic and radioactive. The projectile was subsequently seized
by a large contingent of the police who had a special squad to carry the ammunition in a thick lead container and was then disposed off in a desolate place. Some weeks
later Prof. Gunther was arrested and in prison maltreated. After 3 1/2 weeks of a hunger strike he was released - ill and in bad condition.

For more than a year he was under police surveillance and had to report to the police station twice a week. He was then summoned to a regional court where he was told
that he could be forced to enter a psychiatric institution. A scientist and a doctor who had helped so many dying children in Iraq and other countries and the allied soldiers,
was being told that if he did not mend his ways he will be thrown into solitary confinement. His pension was slashed and he could not afford to buy food for his children.

This article was at http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=133

In August 2017 the site no longer exists and archive.org says "Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine."

How one of the two brains behind the Iran-Contra scandal this week became one of America's most powerful men

John Sutherland, The Guardian, February 18, 2002

He and Oliver North were found to be up
to their necks in the Iran-Contra (guns for hostages) scam, which blew up in 1986.
Poindexter was charged and found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and
the destruction of evidence in 1990; this was overturned on appeal the following
year.

Sharon puts hardliner in defence
post

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem and Brian Whitaker in London
Friday November 1, 2002
The Guardian

Gen Mofaz was in Britain this week on a speaking tour but cut
short his visit on Wednesday as the Israeli government
collapsed and the director of public prosecutions asked
Scotland Yard to investigate war crimes allegations.

Friends of terrorism

Duncan Campbell, Guardian, Friday February 8, 2002

Reich used this role to pursue his own
agenda to such an extent that in 1987 the Comptroller-General of the US, a
Republican appointee, found that some of the efforts of his office were "prohibited,
covert propaganda activities ... beyond the range of acceptable agency public
information activities". A letter of September 30 1987 concluded that Reich's office
had violated "a restriction on the state department's annual appropriations prohibiting
the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorised by
Congress".

Letter from Israel

Private Eye, 30 November to 13 December 2001, page 15

Take the bombing of American targets. Our chaps bombed the US cultural centres in
Cairo and Alexandria as early as 1954, planning to let Abdul Nasser's new Egyptian
government take the blame. Unfortunately the scam went wrong and our defence
minister Pinhas Lavon had to resign, though the director-general of his ministry,
Shimon Peres, managed to hang on. Today he is Ariel Sharon's foreign minister.

Legacy of civilian casualties in ruins of shattered town

Justin Huggler, Independent, 27 November 2001

First paragraph

We were picking our way through the bombed-out ruins of Khanabad when we heard the explosion. When we got there, struggling through the collapsed remains of houses, an old man sat in his blood blinking and shaking his head in bewilderment. Beside him, a 15-year-old boy lay bleeding and unconscious.

To require the suspension of the use, sale, development, production, testing, and export of depleted uranium munitions
pending the outcome of certain studies of the health effects of such munitions, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
October 17, 2001
Ms. MCKINNEY (for herself, Mr. ACEVEDO-VILA, Ms. BALDWIN, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. KUCINICH, and Ms. LEE)
introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Armed Services, and in addition to the Committees on
Energy and Commerce, and International Relations, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case
for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

The disinformation campaign

Phillip Knightley, The Guardian, Thursday October 4, 2001

In the Senate debate whether to approve military action to force Saddam out of
Kuwait, seven senators specifically mentioned the incubator babies atrocity and
the final margin in favour of war was just five votes. John R Macarthur's study
of propaganda in the war says that the babies atrocity was a definitive moment
in the campaign to prepare the American public for the need to go to war.

It was not until nearly two years later that the truth emerged. The story was a
fabrication and a myth, and Nayirah, the teenage Kuwaiti girl, coached and
rehearsed by Hill & Knowlton for her appearance before the Congressional
Committee, was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United
States. By the time Macarthur revealed this, the war was won and over and it
did not matter any more.

PUBLIC SERPENT

Iran-contra villain Elliot Abrams is back in action

Terry J. Allen, In These Times, 6 August 2001

Calling George W. Bush and Jesse
Helms "public servants" is like calling
Iran-contra criminal Elliott Abrams an
"outstanding diplomat"--which is
precisely what White House Press
Secretary Ari Fleischer did when he
announced Abrams' appointment as
senior director of the National Security
Council's Office for Democracy, Human
Rights and International Operations.

Bush's Contra Buddies

Peter Kornbluh, The Nation, 7 May 2001

John Negroponte's nomination
to be US ambassador to the
United Nations is a case in
point. Bush has named him to
represent the United States at
an institution built on principles
that include nonintervention,
international law and human
rights. Qualifications for the
job: Negroponte was a central
player in a bloody paramilitary
war that flagrantly violated
those principles and was
repeatedly denounced by the
institution in which he would
now serve.

A letter from Alan Sked about UKIP published in The Daily Telegraph

Alan Sked, Daily Telegraph, 31 January 2001

A letter from Dr Alan Sked, who writes as "founder of the UKIP"
(United Kingdom Independence Party), and concludes with:
"Michael Ancram is wise to have
nothing to do with the current
leadership of the UKIP, and I
sympathise with all those principled
activists in it who will feel tarnished
by their leadership's lack of honour."

NOBODY'S HERO

Joel Bleifuss, In These Times, 22 January 2001

When questioned by an investigator,
Powell repeatedly pleaded faulty
memory. At one point he replied: "To my
recollection, I don't have a recollection."
He testified that he only found out about
the shipment of missiles to Iran on
January 17, 1986, the day Reagan
formally authorized the transfers.
Circumstantial evidence refutes this
claim. So does Oliver North, who
testified that in his 1985 efforts to get
U.S. missiles sent to Iran, "my original
point of contact was General Colin
Powell, who was going directly to his
immediate superior, Secretary
Weinberger."

Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph, 19 September 2000

First paragraph:

DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement.

Cluster bombs: the hidden toll

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 8 August 2000

First paragraph

The number of civilians prey to unexploded cluster bombs is significantly higher than admitted by governments, including the British, which have consistently suppressed evidence about the weapon's military effectiveness, according to a devastating report published today.

Zinoviev letter was dirty trick by MI6

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 4 February 1999

First paragraph:

The Zinoviev letter - one of the greatest British political scandals of this century -
was forged by a MI6 agent's source and almost certainly leaked by MI6 or
MI5 officers to the Conservative Party, according to an official report published today.

Wheeler tells how he fought the good fight

Michael Evans, The Times, 20 October 1997, page 8

As the headline implies - with its missing quotation marks around "good" - this
interview with Charles Wheeler is a rather
uncritical one. Wheeler gives his account of
his relationship to IRD and related activities
when he worked for the BBC in Berlin.

MI6 fed Cold War propaganda to BBC

Michael Evans, Times, 20 October 1997, page 8

As so often, the newspaper headline is misleading, not least because the article also
describes information flowing from the BBC to MI6, including the betrayal of
confidential letters written to BBC correspondents. The sinister IRD is also mentioned. The
article consists of information regurgitated
from a book War of the Black Heavens, Michael Nelson, which
Evans says was to be published in November 1997 by Brassey's. (In a separate
article on the same page of the Times, Evans interviews Charles Wheeler, who features prominently
in this article.)

Dodi's girl-crazy double caused half the trouble

Maurice Chittenden, Sunday Times, 17 August 1997, pages 1, 3

First paragraph:

IF romancing Diana, Princess of Wales, and fending off his former girlfriend Kelly Fisher
were not difficult enough, Dodi Fayed faces double trouble. An impostor has been seducing
beautiful women and running up huge debts while pretending
to be the Harrods heir.

The night the innocents died

This article contains interviews with survivors of the British and American
terrorist bombing of Dresden in 1945. It also includes
an interview with one of the bombers of other parts of Germany.
Of particular interest is the
glimpse he gives of the murderous hand of so-called "intelligence",
directing the
bombing to target refugees,
while, as one of the survivors recalls, factories and
railway lines remained intact.

Iraq 'used US biotoxins in Gulf war'

Simon Tisdall, Guardian, 11 February 1994, page 13

First paragraph:

The United States government licensed
the export to Iraq of anthrax and other
highly toxic biological agents which were
subsequently used by
President Saddam Hussein
against allied servicemen during
the Gulf war, according to a US senate
investigation.

US admits years of atomic radiation tests on people

The reported "tests" include injecting victims with plutonium,
deliberately releasing radioactive materials in populated areas,
feeding pregnant women radoiactive material and exploding
nuclear bombs in the atmosphere over the USA.
Full article

Britain secretly helped to arm Saddam Hussein's Iraq

Preface from "Betrayed The Real Story of the Matrix Churchill Trial", David Leigh with Richard Norton-Taylor, Bloomsbury 1993

There has never before been such authentic and detailed material available about the operations of the British secret services and their influence on Whitehall - right down to verbatim copies of their own agents' reports and their internal memoranda.

A CIA Gladio-style "stay-behind" network in Iraq?

"In the early 1950s the CIA had been visibly the poor
relation in Iraq to British intelligence, which effectively ran much
of the Baghdad Pact, the alliance of countries in the region
close to the Soviet border. Donald Wilber, a CIA officer who
had assisted in the Iran operation in 1953, recalled his experiences in Baghdad"...
"The CIA was keen to develop a GLADIO-type network in Iraq and to 'plant
communications and demolitions to be used by stay-behind agents' in case the
Russians made an advance into the area."...
"The hidden hand Britain, America and cold war secret intelligence",
Richard J. Aldrich, John Murray, 2001, page 582-3

GLADIO Europe's best kept secret

Hugh O'Shaughnessy, Guardian, 7 June 1992, pages 53-54

More snippets of information about Gladio, with the usual apologist gloss.
One snippet, that is not in other articles so far indexed on this page, is the refusal of
Britain to extradite back to Italy
one Roberto Fiore, wanted for questioning about the terrorist bombings on Italian
railways, and the British government's response on this matter
to Harry and Shirley Mitchell of Bath, whose
daughter was one of the
86 people murdered with a bomb at Bologna railway station in 1980.

Birds of Death

a Wall to Wall television production for Channel 4 MCMXCII
director George Case

A documentary about british royal air force bombing and shooting
of civilians both in Iraq and Waziristan (near modern Pakistan/Afghanistan border)
during the 1920s and 1930s. It includes interviews with
some of the
perpetrators and some of their surviving victims. David Omissi appears in the
credits as a consultant.

Baghdad and British bombers

David Omissi, The Guardian, 19 January 1991
Tenth paragraph:

This "police bombing" was too much for some air force officers to stomach. In 1924, a
distinguished Air Commodore, Lionel Charlton, resigned his post as a staff officer in
Iraq after he visited a hospital and saw the victims of British bombing recovering from
their injuries. The air force recalled him to England, promising not to otherwise
damage his career provided he took his protests no further; but they went back on their
word and placed him on the retired list in 1928.

Journalist dies

Secret agents, freemasons, fascists... and a top-level campaign of political 'destabilisation'

Ed Vulliamy, Guardian, 5 December 1990, page 12

First paragraph:

'I CAN say that the head of
the secret services has
repeatedly and unequivocally
excluded the existence of
a hidden organisation of any
type or size," the Italian Minister
of Defence, Giulio Andreotti,
told a judicial inquiry
in 1974 into the alleged existence
of a secret state army.

The Gladio File: did fear of communism throw West into the arms of terrorists?

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 5 December 1990, page 12

First paragraph:

A CHANCE discovery by
an assiduous Italian
magistrate investigating
a neo-fascist
terrorist attack has unearthed a
secret paramilitary network
run by units of the armed
forces and intelligence services
throughout western Europe.

How MI6 and SAS joined in

Gladio is still opening wounds

Charles Richards, Independent, 1 December 1990, page 12

First two sentences:

OPERATION GLADIO has been dismantled. General
Paolo Inzerilli, chief of staff of the Italian
security service Sismi, told the
parliamentary commission on terrorism
that the Prime Minister issued the
order on Wednesday.

Secret Italian unit 'trained in Britain'

Richard Norton-Taylor/David Gow, Guardian, 17 November 1990, page 10

Third paragraph:

General Gerardo Serravalle,
who said the Italians trained at
a military base in Britain, was
giving evidence yesterday in
Rome to a parliamentary committee
of inquiry into allegations that
Gladio was linked to a series
of rightwing terrorist attacks in Italy
between 1969 and the early 1980s.

Nato's secret network 'also operated in France'

Guardian, 14 November 1990, page 6

First paragraph:

A BRANCH of the Nato-linked European anti-communist
resistance network, which Italian investigators fear
may have been involved in neo-fascist atrocities
in Italy, also operated in France,
the former defence minister, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, has disclosed.

Dead journalist sex smear 'foul'

Malcolm Coad and David Pallister, Guardian, 2 June 1990, page 3

First paragraph:

British officials in Chile are claiming that the dead defence journalist
Jonathan Moyle was a sexual deviant who hanged himself while
attempting to obtain pleasure. It is understood that
members of MI5 have made the same assertion in London.

Waldegrave makes tacit admission of SAS link to Khmer Rouge

Judy Jones, Independent, 14 November 1989, page 10

Second paragraph:

William Waldegrave, Minister of
State at the Foreign Office, provoked
uproar on the Labour benches when he
sidestepped a direct Opposition
challenge to say whether the SAS had been
training troops in Cambodia. "You
know I will give no answer," he told
Gerald Kaufman, the Opposition's
foreign affairs spokesman.

World pressure to see Israeli soldiers tried

Simon Freeman, The Times, 28 February 1988

FOUR Israeli soldiers who were filmed systematically beating up two young
Palestinians in the West Bank town of Nablus are facing courts-martial and possible
prison terms of up to six years. The incident has provoked horror and outrage in
countries where it has been shown on television, although yesterday Israeli
government ministers and officials were trying to minimise its impact.

An extract from "Spycatcher" on the death of Hugh Gaitskell

Liquidating Sukarno

The Times, 8 August 1986, page 12

Second sentence: "In a
book to be published this autumn,
The CIA A Forgotten History
(Zed Books) the American author
William Blum reproduces part of a
sensational 1962 CIA report
which suggests Supermac and JFK
talked about "liquidating" the
troublesome President Sukarno of
Indonesia."

Another exposure -by Tass

Hella Pick, Guardian, 31 January 1978, page 5

Pick reports on a report from
TASS about the IRD. Pick implies that the TASS report is a "selective
summary" of the
Guardian report of 27 January 1978. Her report does not refer to the
work of Richard Fletcher, George Brock, Phil Kelly, Paul Lashmar, Tony Smart and Richard Oliver
published two days before in the Observer.

Fury over honoured killers

Paul Callan, Daily Mirror, 27 June 1975

WHILE Israelis are
honouring the Stern
Gang killers (Eliahu
Hakim and Eliahu Bet-Zuri) at least one man,
Maj. Andrew Hughes
Onslow, is angered - particularly by the tribute
paid by a UN Guard of
Honour when the killers'
remains were handed over
by the Egyptians on
Tuesday.

Speaking Out I'm glad the CIA is 'immoral'

Braden says he was assistant to Allen W. Dulles in 1950.
He mentions CIA interference in trade unions in West Germany, France, Italy, India,
"Baltic ports", CIA payments for "strong-arm squads in Mediterranean ports", CIA financing
of the magazine "Encounter" and a CIA agent as an editor, CIA involvement in
an "organization of intellectuals
called the Congress for Cultural
Freedom".

The Night Hamburg Died

Theobald's Pearl Harbor Challenge Called 'Service' by Fellow Admiral

W A Kitts, Union-Star?, 1954? But see notes

The book
"The final secret of Pearl Harbor, The Washington contribution to the Japanese
attack", Robert A Theobald, The Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1954,
is reviewed by by VICE ADMIRAL W. A. KITTS 3rd, USN, Ret

LORD CURZON ON THE "LOAN" PLOT.

APOLOGISE TO RUSSIA

Daily Mail, 27 October 1924, page 6

First paragraph:

A meeting of Communists on the
plinth of Nelson's Monument in Trafalgar
Square on Saturday passed a resolution
declaring that "this massed meeting
of British workers" called on Mr. MacDonald
and the Government to stigmatise the
Red plot letter as an impudent forgery
and to withdraw the Foreign
Office protest to the Bolshevik Government
with apologies and to dismiss with
ignominy the official responsible for it.